Universal policies on poverty eradication should be restored

By Agnes Nalubiri

For many governments of developing countries, finer targeting of programs to alleviate poverty appears an attractive option. In Uganda Universal Primary Education (UPE), although sounds contrary targets children from poor families to access primary education.

In addition NGOs’ target smaller groups in communities to be able to reach the deserving poor and optimise resources.

In an era of constrained expenditure budgets it seems as though policymakers could achieve greater poverty reduction with fewer resources if only they would resort to targeting specific groups of people.

Coupled by international development agencies’ strong advocacy for targeted interventions as an effective way of alleviating poverty, leaders in developing countries are left without option.

The choice to targeting in most developing countries has been shaped by the shifts in ideological underpinnings of social and economic policies in donor countries. Targeting is explicitly defined to reflect its effectiveness in alleviating poverty-a short-run cost effective intervention which concentrates limited resources on the poor aiming to reduce poverty.

Targeting was invented to ensure that financial support reach the poor and only the poor. However Key vivid mistakes especially in NGO targeted activities for example is failing to reach the targeted poor and instead reaching the non targeted groups.

As a criterion is used to identify the deserving poor, those who would not satisfy that criterion could nevertheless pretend that they do by providing inaccurate information.

In Uganda UPE has limited support from rich middle class people as children from rich families have abandoned public schools in favour of private ones.

Yet UPE schools goers often suffer stigma for their inability to pay school fees in better private schools. Moreover higher remunerations in private schools had deprived public schools of better quality teachers, leaving UPE schools dilapidated and dysfunctional.

While one may argue that a fairly targeted economic program can yield immediate results compared to universal programs. In developing countries where visibility of people in the informal sector to the state is low, it requires extensive capacity, skills and high administrative costs to identify the deserving poor. In the long run administrative costs involved in identifying the deserving poor can itself fund a bigger project.

NGO targeted programs for example require field travelling, registering individuals, applications process, appraisal process, meetings where venues are hired and people given transport refund and meals.

All these administrative costs of acquiring entitlements to targeted schemes are incredibly high. Although some types of selection are inevitable, it is more effective with universal programs.

Moreover the absence or weakness of institutions to properly implement these interventions evident in developing countries increases the costs involved and leakages to non poor.

Consequently, given the enormous administrative costs, stigmatisation and the high levels of leakage involved, it is worth concluding that targeting is ineffective in poverty eradication, and thus universal policies should be restored as it was in the late 19^th century in developed countries.

The writer is a poverty student at Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, The Netherlands